Eisenhower was the last "decent" republican politician

and before him, there was Lincoln, but that's about it folks.

Lincoln would not even BE a republican if he lived in our time.

All that dems need to do to win elections, is to point out a few salient facts...undeniable facts.

republicans are for:

preserving tax breaks & goodies for rich folks

balancing the budget (not even possible) on the backs of poor ,sick & old folks

ending the middle class

keeping insurance companies between you and your doctor

monitoring the reproductive systems of women

undermining the upward mobility of "people not like themselves"

Democrats are about building things, getting things done, setting in motions programs that HELP individual people, and society in general.

To be fair, sometimes we get things wrong (NAFTA, etc), but more often than not, we are about :

making sure EVERYONE gets to vote
making sure people have food & health care
trying to make college more affordable
getting poor seniors a more comfortable old age
making sure that women control their own reproductive organs
trying to clean up the environment & address future climate issues

Everything we TRY to get accomplished is automatically met with resistance from republicans who always point out that we cannot afford it.

They can always find enough money to reward their benefactors or to pay for wars.

They are selfish...and dangerous to society at large




edited to add the word "politician:..:)

hard core military lifer.
believed in common decency and helping the poor.
Believed in funding public education.
believed in research.

he would have made a good Democrat.

and like BG, he was on a learning curve. If Republicans were like him, this country would be a different place.

Most of the republicans I have met seem to fall in line with the overall "plan" of "Just say NO!"... until some tragedy hits their immediate family and they get very government-oriented in a hurry..

Ed Brooks.

Chaffee/ Jeffords?

do you think they suddenly became decent politicians when they left? No. Both Chafee and Jeffords voted against the IWR- as Republicans. Jeffords was one of the best in the Senate on Education, disability rights and the environment. He voted against Thomas. All this as a republican. You're simply wrong.

Lincoln, Grant, Teddy Roosevelt, and Eisenhower. I suppose they really didn't fit the mold, but succeeded in spite of their party.

I doubt that he would be one today:).. The Bull Moose thing suited him better:)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mac_Mathias

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lincoln_Chafee


Unless you meant Republican PRESIDENT.......

Of course, both these guys were basically kicked out of the GOP, and, yes, it's really hard to find a Republican that I don't want (in the words of my late Grandmother) to slap silly.

:)

Why? Just curious.

:)

Who railed against the abuses of big business, "malefactors of great wealth" and unearned privilege.

If a Repig said that today, their toungue would snap off its roller.

TR was one of the good ones, regardless of party.

Jacob Javits, Nelson Rockefeller, Olympia Snowe, Susan Collins to name a few.

He was very supportive of civil and women's rights... he supported many social programs as well. He looks more like a Democrat these days... which may be why he was left off your list:D

But when he ran for the Presidency, he wanted to end social programs such as Social Security.

I'm glad he didn't win the presidency in '64, but I developed some respect for him in his later years.

Herbert Hoover usually gets a bad rap, but he was really an impressive person. It is said that he may have saved more people than any other single person in history. He was hailed as a hero in Europe after World War I as he oversaw relief efforts that fed millions of people. He fed millions more during the great Russian famine in deviance of many legislators who did not want to feed Bolsheviks (republicans of course).

The Democratic party pursued Hoover to be their presidential candidate and Wilson wanted to see Hoover as his successor.

Toward the end of his presidency he implemented emergency relief programs that eventually were renamed and taken up by FDR as part of his New Deal.

This was a highly underrated man who happened to be in office at the wrong time.

I've got lots to do today.... Y'all continue lauding repubs

I have not met many "recent " repubs worth much

Even the "better" ones, still have that "R" next to their names that, when combined with the blue dogs we have, keep a lot of good things from happening, and allow a lot of really bad things to happen.

Their "R" sometimes leads to us being in the minority where not a lot of anything good happens.... we used to care about that.. maybe not so much anymore?

carry on...laundry calls:hi:

One thing that Hoover had in common with Ike was they both were pursued by the Democratic party, so they hardly fit today's version of republicans.

like clean underwear & jeans... how dare he :)

Some guys are SO picky.

Really good looking guy and his daughter was murdered in their home. Unfortunately I don't remember much else about him. It was so long ago.

(on a more serious note, I always felt Jack Kemp wasn't too bad)

I sure did like his wife, too.

I remember Ford as the thug who an unindicted co-conspirator(Nixon), appointed to the presidency and then after the unindicted co-conspirator(Nixon), left office Ford pardoned him so he couldn't be indicted and prosecuted.

That is how I remember that period anyway.

Don

And a number of good Supreme Court justices, from Earl Warren to John Paul Stevens, who at least started out as Republicans.

"He was a craft, self-protective man. He presided over a country in which a number of problems were acute and were getting worse, where if he had taken action at the time, it might have meant that he could deal with those problems while they were still manageable." Arthur Schlesinger, Jr.

"Should any political party attempt to abolish social security, unemployment insurance, and eliminate labor laws and farm programs, you would not hear of that party again in our political history. There is a tiny splinter group, of course, that believes you can do these things. Among them are H. L. Hunt (you possibly know his background), a few other Texas oil millionaires, and an occasional politician or business man from other areas. Their number is negligible and they are stupid."
-- Dwight D. Eisenhower in a letter to his brother Edgar, November 8, 1954

He delivered enough Senate GOP votes to ensure the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964?

I have some fondness for a couple of former (and now dead) Alaska governors who were Republicans -- Jay Hammond and Wally Hickel -- but on the national level, not so much.

He visited China, he backed environmental regulations, etc. He would have been called a "closet liberal" by the right-wing screamers of today.

You gotta love a man that didn't take himself that seriously but still did the people's work.

http://www.massmoments.org/moment.cfm?mid=46

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FOrLZ-GfmzA

Conte was difficult to categorize. One reporter called him "an Italian in an Irish milieu, a Republican in a Democratic House, and a liberal in a conservative party." Although he ran as a Republican, he voted as an independent. Conte frequently supported programs favored by liberals. He consistently fought efforts by Republican administrations to dismantle or cut back those programs. He was a leader in formulating national health care policy and worked tirelessly to increase funding for medical research.

Remembering how the G.I. Bill had transformed his own life, he was a strong proponent of federal funding for student aid, literacy training, vocational education, special education, and Head Start. He was also an environmentalist. He led the fight for acid rain legislation that culminated in the Clean Air Act of 1990, the most stringent industrial pollution legislation in the history of the nation. He sponsored numerous bills to protect wilderness areas, wetlands, and wildlife.

John Olver currently holds the seat once held by Conte.

was the long-serving Labour MP and first female British Speaker, Betty Boothroyd. She worked for him for a while as a young women temporarily in America, and mentioned him very favourably in her autobiography.